The Death of Hustle
Time to stop making widgets and get your hands all over everything instead
Welcome to All the Tasks Fit to Print, my weekly newsletter on all issues productivity-related for authors (and other solopreneurs)!
NOTE: This article is not particularly pro- or anti-artificial intelligence technology, but is simply looking at what is happening and how the history of technological change can inform us on what is going to happen next.
I believe that despite appearances, we are entering the age of the death of hustle — no, not the dance step! I mean "hustle culture," and by golly, good riddance!
I don't think there have many business movements as destructive to mental health and well being as "hustle culture." I understand that in our society, especially of late, we are forced to find more and more ways to generate income. Inflation affects us all, it's true, but the "hustle culture" mentality drives people to break themselves in order to achieve a very broken version of success, in my opinion.
That's why I'm pleased to watch as "hustle culture" get taken out at the knees.
However, this is not because society is suddenly becoming enlightened (I wish!), but because artificial intelligence has reached a tipping point. I won't say that AI is itself enlightened (not yet?) but it doesn't have to be. It just needs to be good enough to match a mediocre human.
Where We’re At
If you watched the 60 Minutes special on AI from mid-2023, you have a clue where this is going. But be advised: a lot of us who are immersed in the AI revolution knew the 60 Minutes piece soft-balled it, and developments since that aired prove it. The men they interviewed were intentionally holding back on being honest about the changes ahead out of concern of sparking mass hysteria. We knew this because many of us are behind the closed doors of AI development, and we know what is being said where "the public" can't hear.
Like 60 Minutes, I am not trying to instill fear, either. There are some truly amazing things on the horizon, especially in regards to scientific and medical advancements!
But we need to confront the fact that what is colloquially called "The Great Replacement" is already in affect. You might not see it that way because the Great Replacement is less about replacing individual jobs with a robot than it is about condensing the amount of work people with a certain job description need to do. What you will see in the next couple of years is (for example) whole departments of marketing teams being replaced by one or two "prompt engineers" working with AI to create everything that it used to take ten people to do.
Admittedly, this has been the long, slow roll of industrialization for going on three centuries now. Acres of farmland do not need a team of people to turn the soil over, just one person in a tractor. The difference now is that the change will happen over the course of months, not decades.
And the brutal truth is that none of us can outperform AI in the areas where AI is strongest: repetitive tasks, data-driven tasks, and brute force data crunching.
Where We’re Going
We also can't keep up with the speed at which AI is making inroads into more creative data-driven tasks like writing and digitial art (for all that issues of copyright surround those tasks, the fact remains that large language models are able to perform them).
Several AI platforms are already trialing "text to video" creation! Many authors I know are already using AI tools to help them plot, outline, and even draft their stories. (We are definitely NOT at the point of "push a button and get a well written book" but chances are that we will be there in a few years.) Many online course creators are already using AI to build new courses from scratch, from outline to content to video scripts to product creation.
Yes, "the AI of everything" is coming, and right now is the most stupid and useless AI will ever be.
That might sound like fear mongering, but honestly I don't consider it that way. We have to potential for AI to do the dirty work while we do work that is interesting, creative, and challenging. In my opinion, that's an awesome future! (If we can grab it!)
So when I talk about the death of hustle culture, this is what I mean: all the time spent churning out mediocre products and services won't be worth it anymore.
In his excellent book Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation, Kevin Roose talks about how the future is not about elbow grease but handprints.
What does he mean by that?
He means that no amount of hardworking elbow grease is going to allow you to outperform AI/robots. Instead, we need to apply the human touch to our work, that is, put our handprints on what we do. Working harder, giving in to hustle culture and trying to make every second of your day productive, won't help you get ahead, be more successful, or make more money.
Instead, we need to focus on our unique skills and talents to build mutually supportive communities — leave our handprints on what we are creating, so to speak.
As a productivity coach, I think this is great news for my clients and for all of us. Most of the women I work with spend a lot of time and energy trying to optimize their calendar for productivity, trying to find more hours in the day to squeeze more work in.
Imagine never having to worry about that again because your work is so special, so unique, that no amount of hustle can outdo you!
Homework Assignment
What I want you to do today is to put down your to-do list and think up a Handprints Strategy.
Think of the things that only you can do in a way that anyone who encounters it will know it is your work. You don't have to be an artist to think like this! Being a parent is a great example of an important roll you have that cannot (or, at least, should not!) be outsourced to anyone else, much less an AI.
As an entrepreneur or business owner, if you consider how your business is different, I bet the answer is not going to be "because I make widgets that are so average everyone will buy them!"
That's fine if you do, but it's not a futureproof business model. Doing that more, harder, and longer won't be enough when AI-powered robots/interfaces can do just as well as that for far less cost and 100x as fast. Hustle culture won't save you.
Handprints culture will!
Create a Handprints Strategy that is more than just the things you DO or NEED TO DO. It's not about what you can accomplish! A Handprints Strategy should combine the things you do with the things you believe in. It should represent your values.
Anyone can be a business coach, even AI. If you go to ChatGPT and ask it business advice, it will give you the exact same canned response that even expensive business coaches will give you.
A Handprints Strategy version of "be a business coach" doesn't say "help entrepreneurs be successful." It says, "As a survivor of domestic abuse, I use a trauma-informed approach with my clients to help them process their fears and insecurities so they can successfully run their business without compounding their trauma."
Very likely, you have already defined some of your Handprints Strategy by way of your brand identity, especially if you have looked at how you can niche down your target demographic. Use that as jumping off point to analyze how you can bring more of yourself into your business so you can out-hustle the machines without ever breaking a sweat.